Victor
Victor is a Cuban narrow gauge tank engine owned by the North Western Railway. He works at the Sodor Steamworks, where he shunts and collects new engine parts, oversees major repairs, watches over Kevin and carries out weekly inspections on the Skarloey Railway. He is generally seen as being the "manager" of the works. Biography Victor was originally painted yellow and worked at a sugar plantation in Cuba. He was brought to the Island of Sodor on the same ship as Luke, who could not understand him as he only spoke Spanish. During the voyage, the chains holding Victor to the deck snapped, causing him to roll around the deck. When the ship arrived at Brendam Docks, Victor was planned to be unloaded first, but this changed as Luke was too excited to wait his turn. Victor tried to tell the men about his problem, but nobody understood him. As he was being unloaded, Luke was swung right into Victor, knocking him off the ship into the sea. Victor landed on a jetty, but due to the bad weather, he was left there for a long time and left in a mess. Victor was eventually recovered and sent to the Sodor Steamworks to be repaired. Realising that nobody could understand him, Victor learned English. His first word was "red", the colour he chose for his new life on Sodor. He now works at the Steamworks, where he supervises major repairs , collects new engine parts and carries out weekly inspections on the Skarloey Railway. He also watches over Kevin, his clumsy mobile crane assistant. After Thomas found Hiro abandoned on an overgrown siding, Victor helped him repair him in secret by leaving flatbeds of spare engine parts for him and the other engines to use. When the Fat Controller was made aware of the situation, Victor was put in charge of overseeing Hiro's restoration. Until recently, Luke believed that Victor had been scrapped as a result of the damage he had taken after falling off the ship. He blamed himself for the accident and hid at the Blue Mountain Quarry for most of his life, fearing he would be sent away if the truth came out. However, Thomas found out that Victor was the yellow engine from his past and had Paxton bring him to the quarry to meet Luke. Victor assured Luke that he was not to blame and befriended him. Personality Technical Details Basis Victor is based on Minaz No. 1173, an 0-4-0 pannier tank-saddle tank locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works that worked at the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Sugar Mill in Cuba. This locomotive carried water in its saddle tank and oil in its pannier tanks. The locomotive was in poor condition and withdrawn after 1993. On 3 August 2012, 1173 was rescued from Céspedes and transferred to the Patria Sugar Mill Museum, where it was repainted and put on display with other locomotives rescued from Céspedes and other sugar mills. Victor has been heavily modified from his original basis; he has been fitted with buffers and screw-link couplings, allowing him to work with British rolling stock, and he has been re-gauged. As the Sodor Steamworks is based on high profile locomotive workshops (such as Crewe and Darlington), Victor, like the narrow gauge locomotives that worked there, is a narrow gauge engine, allowing him to work around the tight turns and small spaces of the Steamworks. Livery Victor is painted dark red with yellow wheels and lining. He has yellow and black hazard stripes painted on his front buffer beam and on his cab above his rear buffer beam, and he has the Sodor Steamworks symbol on both sides of his cab in a yellow square. In Blue Mountain Mystery, prior to receiving his red livery, Victor was painted yellow with dark green wheels and lining. His buffer beams were painted maroon, his number was painted on the sides of his cab in green, and he had two stars and a symbol of the sun painted on his cab and pannier tanks in yellow. His saddle tank over his smokebox was also painted yellow instead of black. Trivia * Victor is, presently, the only narrow gauge engine owned by the North Western Railway and the only narrow gauge engine to have a snowplough. References